Monday 29 November 2010

Three to Watch

Machete

I am an unabashed fan of Robert Rodriguez, despite what many may feel about the over the top imagery to be found in all his works aimed at adults. To me this is central to his endearingness as an artist. Many directors are chameleons with the ability to work in disparate genres and while these craftsmen are bestowed with praise and awards for fickleness, someone with a more singular vision like Rodriguez remains something of an outsider. Indeed, while his work may not immediately suggest art-film, to my sensibilities he displayed real artistic integrity by quitting the Directors Guild of America over a credits' dispute concerning Sin City, precluding himself from ever receiving an Oscar.

His latest film, Machete, is based on a massively popular pseudo-trailer from the tragically overlooked Grindhouse double feature. Thankfully, the new film has had far more success with both the public and the critics , in spite of its dabbling in graphic, intestinal humour.

The titular character is played by an actor whose face is the epitome of cragginess, Danny Trejo, and it's a small miracle that distinctive features such as his are still allowed in today's sanitized Hollywood. A slightly different version of this character known as 'Uncle' Machete appeared in the family film Spy Kids, to which my son recently gave his fervent approval. In keeping with his trademark, anti-establishment attitude, Rodriguez has lined up a cast which, aside from some very familiar faces, also contains members of that most unloved category; the 80s B-movie star! Steven Seagal and Jeff Fahey, and an honorable inclusion must also go to Don Johnson, who doesn't really conform to the type if you look at his body of work, but there is something about the man which suggests he could have had a memorable second-tier career focusing on straight-to-VHS titles.

There is little point in discussing the plot, but it does involve threads of revenge and pro-immigration politics (possibly not given the best vehicle here). However, if you're offended by extremely attractive unclothed women, and utterly ridiculous, jocular violence then this is most definitely one to steer clear of. On the other hand if the thought of a never-smiling Danny Trejo turning to the camera to say 'Machete don't text' piques your interest, then treats lie ahead.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Another director wholly uninterested in staid drama and Hollywood convention is Edgar Wright. He and  his chief collaborator Simon Pegg have been responsible for some interesting output since they first began attracting attention with their off-the-wall television programme Spaced. Since then, they've released two very well respected comedies; Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Pegg has become a recognizable face in Hollywood, despite his not being able to outdo James Doohan's Scottish accent in the revamp of Star Trek (J.J. Abrams). Now Wright has made his first feature without Pegg since his debut (unseen by me) A Fistful of Fingers. 

Scott Pilgrim has so far been the most surprising flop of the year - it's certified fresh at 81% on the Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer, and also contains a young, talented cast who are in perfect sync with the material. Some have said that the bold visuals referencing video games overshadow a more or less perfunctory plot, but let's face it, in what pre-existing movie must the hero defeat his newfound love's seven evil exes in mortal combat in order to secure her affections? All the unorthodox stylisations are a pleasure to behold, and it couldn't be clearer that Wright, unlike so many of his peers, is not afraid to go outside any semblance of reality in order to find ways to excite and amuse his audience. This is generally cinema's greatest weakness; so much of it is an anaemic imitation of life, when so many of us go to the cinema to escape the drudgery of our lives. I haven't read the graphic novel which the movie is based on, but somehow I'm guessing that the style employed by Wright is mandated within its pages.

Having seen three of Wright's films and both seasons of Spaced, I'd say the jury is still out as to whether he'll become a milestone figure of the movies. I like his films - they can be excruciatingly funny - but I'm still waiting for him to turn his hands to a real epic of a story, best befitting the potential evidenced in his work so far. As a relatively young Briton, he's produced some head-turning work, and Pilgrim is his Hollywood feature debut, so hopefully it will be a smash-hit on Blu-Ray, and Wright will continue to expand the borders of our imaginations.

The American

I have yet to see  Anton Corbijn's feature debut, Control, about the ill-fated singer of Joy Division, Ian Curtis. Though a quick glance at Corbijn's résumé suggests that as a teenager I may well have seen some of the music videos which he'd made beforehand, when I paid more attention to such things.
In The American, he's managed to make a film that not only plays like an art-house special, but has also become a commercial success. It must be said, that without the involvement of George Clooney, and the film's outward resemblance to an action/spy thriller, it could hardly have been expected to have performed as well at the box office. This instance of betting on a long-shot suggests there is something wrong with Hollywood's usual greenlighting system. The conventional wisdom is that films targeted at teens, like Scott Pilgrim, will automatically translate to box office gold, while adults seeking more cerebral thrills don't spend much money at the movies. Omnivores such as myself seem to get the best deal out of wrongheaded decisions made by the suits watching the money, although with every successive year there does seem to be a greater proliferation of movies meant to have mass appeal that have no appeal whatsoever.
That's not to say some viewers haven't felt shortchanged by The American. Imdb has a very negative user review where the writer states that he and his wife would have both enjoyed the film had it not been  falsely marketed as a Jason Bourne type thriller. It's difficult to convey in writing the dumbfounded expression which made its way to my face at the rotten logic of such a contention. Have the ad-men really gained that much control over our psyches?

I personally was a little surprised by how much fuss has been made over what many feel to be a dichotomy between the film itself and its marketing campaign. Anyone paying attention to Clooney's work would know by now that the man is just not interested in playing the roles expected of him. In 2005 he starred in Syriana (Stephen Gagan), an oil industry polemic so much more convoluted than the likes of The American that I am still waiting for a bit of extra time on my hands to watch it several times over, in the hope of getting closer to deducing just what on earth is going on.

And then there are the endless debates about slow pacing, as can be found in the movie. For me there is no debate. It's quite simple; non-stop explosions and machine-gun fire can only serve one good purpose, and that is to make you smile at the absurdity of it all in a film such as Machete. The most exciting, believable, on-screen action is served up in sparing doses, otherwise it is just flat-out dull. That's why I stopped going to see Michael Bay films long ago.

The American takes its time, and in doing so manages to tell you a great deal about the character played by Clooney without needing to give you any solid information about the actions which may have defined him prior to the film's opening scene. An opening scene, which I may add, quickly lets you know in a moment of violence on Clooney's part, that this is not going to be a typical action film. And so we are given a study of a character with a lifestyle as foreign as can be, shrouded in mystery. Yet, unlikely though it may seem, his actions rarely fail to evoke empathy.

Control is in black and white, and when the credits of The American began rolling I couldn't help but think that the film would have reached a truly dizzying level of artistry if these scenes of a tiny* rural Italian village - as alluring as they were in their colour presentation - had been filmed in gritty, atmospheric, black and white too. 


Additional thought: The exquisite, spy-themed, television programme by AMC, Rubicon, was recently cancelled after one season. Chief complaint against it? Too slow! It really is time that silent films were made mandatory segments of high-school curriculums to tackle this peverse mindset, yet by now it is probably the teachers who would do the rejecting. 

* Castel del Monte - population 129





Friday 26 November 2010

32

And just getting started, or so it sometimes seems. 

It is my birthday today, and having been quite preoccupied of late, it would honestly have slipped my mind if it weren't for all the well wishers out there (yet again, thank you Facebook). Certain events have made me feel older than seems appropriate, such as Sony's announcement a few weeks ago that the date of birth of the original walkman actually came a couple of years after my own. 



Walkman Mark I, in all its glory


This should have come as no surprise to me, as like many of my friends, I owned several of the devices growing up. I think when I got my first one I had yet to develop much interest in the popular musicians of the day, and it possibly startled my father when the first cassette I selected to go with my new acquisition was the soundtrack to The Sound of Music. I must have been eight years-old at the time, and my 'walkman' was actually made by Sanyo, who wouldn't have been allowed to use the appellation trademarked by Sony.  Although it does lend itself to generic usage much more nicely than the proprietary sounding 'i-Pod'. My most poignant walkman memory however, came a few years later, and it was on an official device, sleeker and less fun-looking than the one pictured above, but decorated with much the same logos. And it isn't a musical memory either, as I was sitting on a public bus traveling from Edinburgh to Peebles, listening to the radio (to save on batteries) when the chilling news of the murder of toddler Jamie Bulger, at the hands of two adolescents, hit the airwaves. A crime so unspeakable that it perpetually lingers in the minds of the public .

Never watching broadcast television does not keep me out of touch with the news, but perhaps it does lead to my failing to stay abreast of 'what the kids are into these days'. Only this week, I tried to engage some of my teenage charges at work about a singer who had skyrocketed to fame when I first began teaching eleven years ago, and felt a little red-faced when they professed to never having heard of the man in question. Fame has always been of a mercurial nature, but when, also about eleven years ago, I met groups of teenagers who had never heard of The Beatles, it was amazement rather than embarrassment which I felt. Though thankfully since then, the most influential musical force of the 20th century have gone through more of their periodic revivals, and the young appear to be enlightened to the roots of the modern pop song once again. 

Age leads to a frailer physique, which might seem a bit premature coming from someone in their early 30s, but mysterious ailments abound in my family, to which I'm no stranger, Having been pronounced acutely ill on more than one occasion during my life - with no permanent medical solutions to my maladies coming to the fore - in connection to being father to a small boy, is reason to ponder one's own mortality. It's not just me either, with all of my near-aged friends being far more susceptible to hangovers and the flu these days, and like me, choosing to pay closer attention to things such as diet and exercise. While I find much to love about living in Indonesia's capital, its dust and dirt clearly have a negatively potent affect on my system, and I must question all proponents of enviro-skepticism on this one simple point; pollution is painful!

As we near the holidays and my workload is dwindling down to next to nothing, it does seem as though the adrenaline-charged fourteen-hour days which have become my norm might actually be good for me, because since inactivity has been settling in, on my birthday weekend, I am suffering from the worst case of flu I've had in a good long while. But I still feel cause for optimism, as despite 32 jam-packed years of the good, the bad and the ugly, I still can't help but wonder at all there is around me of interest which I have yet to absorb. Being disposed to sloth-like habits when it comes to self-improvement, never mind the infinite nature of knowledge, it will happily always be an insurmountable mountain of knowledge for me. In the meantime, hopefully a couple of hours of horizontal living will make me feel bored and energetic enough to celebrate my birthday by having lunch with my son, whose table manners and conversational offerings aren't the best, but to paraphrase Bill Murray's great line in Lost in Translation; he is the most interesting person I know.









Saturday 20 November 2010

Alone in an Ultra World

In the age of instant communication it is becoming more and more obvious that many among us are painfully lonely. The internet has become a vessel to escape one's shell, although to me it seems inadequate as a substitute for real connections between people. Such shells may exist for different reasons; debilitating illness, insecurity, or an unsettling physical appearance which drives others away. It's difficult to put a real gauge on it as the person in question, but the latter item has seemed to be one obstacle preventing me from connecting with as many people as I'd like. While I've enjoyed relationships with normal, intelligent people both of a platonic nature and otherwise, there does seem to be something about the imposing figure I cut which puts people off. I remember incidents when I was a child where I was accused of alcohol consumption and petty theft both at school and home, where the only evidence was that I 'looked like a criminal'. Unfortunately, I would go on to compound the suspicions because I felt that if I was going to be subject to such allegations anyway, I may as well get something out of it.

I think back in those days the seeds were planted for me to feel awfully uncomfortable in my own skin, and find it hard to forge what constitutes a full set of healthy relationships with the people around me. And now, Monday to Friday, I go to work and feel lost amongst large groups of people, and it is normal for my weekends to consist of long bouts of involuntary solitude. I am lucky in that I have a son as a focal point in my life, to take my mind off the otherwise peculiar isolation of my existence.

I use services like Facebook and Twitter frequently, and find them a useful means of keeping abreast of developments in the lives of people I know. These are not relationships, but more like portals where everyone has their own - very selective I should think - news channel. There is some kind of vicarious, voyeuristic allure in reading about the lives of others, and sometimes I wonder if it is altogether healthy. However, there have been quite a few occasions where Facebook has facilitated meetings with people who been absent from my life in body, but not in soul, for many a year, and I gained real pleasure from getting back in touch again. Before Facebook, no-frills emailing put me in touch with a circle of friends whom I thought I would never hear from again, and eventually led to my meeting one of them - an individual for whom I have great affection.

Because, to reiterate, I have had some wonderful relationships with people over the years, but in the era of globalization and high speed everything, we tend to be ships passing one another in the night. I actually have a long list of very close friends, but the vast majority of them live in different cities or countries, and having something as old-fashioned as a chat over a few beers is a very difficult proposition.

The older I get, the more I find that while purpose-driven - but largely emotionally unrewarding - relationships are increasingly bountiful, real intimacy is woefully hard to come by. I can't help feel that it is simply me, and not just my appearance, but also my worldview, which evidently is not in tune with most whom I meet. Indeed, my insistence on raising my son as a single-father has in itself proved to be a definitive obstacle when trying to change said familial dynamic, the family of the woman closest to me making the foregone conclusion that there must be something inherently dysfunctional about the parent who got left behind.

And to that woman I dedicate this blog entry.

Monday 15 November 2010

Digitally Yours

Yesterday I had some rare time alone, and decided to make use of it to go to the multiplex and treat myself to a double-bill of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Neils Arden Oplev) and The Social Network (David Fincher). My selections were purely based on the considerable acclaim these films have received, but I also managed to chance upon two films to which information technology is central to the plot. Another connection which didn't enter into my decision-making is that Fincher has announced plans to remake Dragon Tattoo for Hollywood. Social Network deals with a controversial, but unavoidable, reality of the digital age; social networking, whereas the Swedish film, Dragon Tattoo, details how hacking may be used as a tool to find a serial killer - whose crimes are so horrific that I sincerely hope they have little to do with reality.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I settled into the movie at first pleasantly surprised by what appeared to be a flawless picture, in perfect focus, till I realised that it was going to be a digital presentation. This seems to often be the case with smaller titles, although this time the digital projection was considerably better than when I went to see Mongol (Sergey Bodrov) at a different branch of the same group of cinemas, the most obvious difference being that the objects in the background weren't obscured beyond recognition. I still stand firm in my belief that slightly scratchy reel projection is much more satisfying than flawless digital. I'm not some kind of traditionalist who is against progress, but the inferiority of digital projection is obvious even to untrained eyes like mine.

I have a bigger complaint against the presentation, not the film itself, being that the censor had managed to remove any references to actual dragon tattoos from the screen! I'm fairly certain that something must have been redacted, given that the original Swedish title of the film translates as Men Who Hate Women. Sitting through a film which contained scenes of forced fellatio, rape and particularly gruesomely mutilated bodies (it should be added that the murders are all based on descriptions found in the bible), the best reason I can come up with for why this obviously key plot strand was removed, is that it would have involved showing some actual nudity, which evidently is more offensive than the other items mentioned. Mind you,  there was a shot of a photograph of a nude corpse in the film which managed to sneak under the radar - showing the parts of the anatomy which matter. I've never seen the actual censorship criteria written down, but it seems to go something like this (from most to least offensive) nudity (but not sexuality of which there is an abundance in all Indonesian media), blasphemy, then heroin/cocaine abuse. Violence is almost never censored, and can frequently be viewed on daytime television.

That the film never failed to keep me under its spell, despite the above disappointments, is a testimony to its story and telling. It presents and solves a mystery in a way that kept even this jaded viewer interested. Noomi Rapace, the girl who might have a dragon tattoo is, as many have pointed out, one of the most compelling fictional characters of recent times, and could easily be the most compelling heroine since Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme). Her exceptionally gritty individualism, as portrayed in both her appearance and her actions is what drives the film. It's possible that many of the elements which make up the murder mystery have been seen before, but I can't remember ever before seeing, or even hearing about, a protaganist such as this one.

Despite having seen most of Ingmar Bergman's films, I don't often get to see modern Swedish films. Not that I avoid them, but with limited time on my hands, I tend to gravitate to whatever my favourite film writers are telling me to watch. There is also the fact that a large amount of my viewing time is devoted to catching up with classic, and not so classic, films of days gone by. There is at least one other modern Swedish film that I watched a few years ago, and that is the original Insomnia (Erik Skjoldbjærg). I thought about it  during Dragon Tattoo, as they both suggest that Scandinavia is home to some very nasty criminals. Given the grim efficacy of these films, I also wondered why you don't see more films from Sweden taking the spotlight nowadays.

My longish day at the cinema yesterday yielded surprisingly few trailers, and I must confess, I enjoy watching trailers, even though so many of them are better films than the ones they're advertising. In fact, during two films, both longer than 120 minutes, I only saw one preview and it was the sequel to Dragon Tattoo - The Girl Who Played with Fire. A couple of things came to mind when watching the trailer in conjunction with the predecessor to the film it was advertising: there was a fleeting shot of what looked very much like a large dragon tattoo on Ms Rapace's back, while in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo itself, there is a long flashback of a girl playing with fire.

Yes, I was left feeling a bit confused, but in no way has this confusion put me off the idea of going to the sequel, nor the final instalment of the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which has already been released in the West. And the estate of the late Stieg Larrson might smile slightly if they knew they had persuaded at least one punter to seek out the books written by him on which the trilogy is based, as well as an unredacted version of the first film! I understand that because the films were originally made for Swedish television, there is a version available that is much longer than that which was put into theatrical release. It's probably twice as long as the version I saw here in Jakarta.

The Social Network

The second part of my double-bill was undoubtedly the better movie, despite its most eye-brow raising imagery being some excellently dressed women and drug abuse (at least in the version I watched!), it evoked from me even greater edge of my seat anticipation than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had done. Christopher Nolan may be Hollywood's most popular auteur of the 21st century, and having now seen every one of his features, I can say that there isn't a bad one among them. However, it is in the works of David Fincher, a director who has been around a little longer, where I find myself losing serious track of time. Unlike Nolan, he has made at least one unequivocal stinker in the form of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was not only boring but also discomfiting. I was happy to see that in Social Network, Fincher has returned to the medium of an atmospherically shot movie of characters essentially doing little more than engaging in taut dialogue, a feat he pulled off equally well in the undervalued Zodiac. That film, as it happens, was also about a serial killer, but contained next to no gore.

In Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg plays the founder of Facebook and the youngest billionare in history, Marc Zuckerberg, and in doing so shakes off any lingering comparisons between himself and Michael Cera. For the portrayal of Zuckerberg is a far cry from the endearing teenagers which I had hitherto seen Eisenberg depicting in movies like Adventureland and Zombieland. Indeed, many viewers might agree that the deletive expletive with which a young woman addresses him in the opening scene of the film is an understatement. I couldn't help feeling a nagging empathy for Eisenberg's Zuckerberg. Granted, his financial success eclipses mine at least a billion times over, but on many occasions I've felt what it's like to be the outsider in the room, and be somehow socially out of sync with my companions. 

And while the character has some boderline sociopathic tendencies, if you look at his actions themselves in the film, the worst things attributed to him are his public venting when spurned by a woman, and some shark-like business tactics. One should certainly be careful about how one behaves on the internet, a fact which I'm sure the real Zuckerberg is acutely aware of by now, and as for his business practices, whatever he may or may not have done (the film makes sure to avoid any certainty when it comes to assignation of guilt in the real legal battles, still unresolved), he hasn't been using his fiendish intellect to rip off this customers to the same degree as many a familiar face that has been making headlines during the last couple of years.

While Social Network is easily one of the best films of the year for me so far, as is often the case when one is close to a subject - I use Facebook every day - some moments in the film made me wince a little. Most notable of these were the eureka! moments which Zuckerberg has every time he's found a way to distinguish his product from the competition, such as publishing your relationship status. Having said that, there were definitely moments of familiarity when a character is being berated by his girlfriend for listing himself as 'single'. The one feature of Facebook which the film doesn't mention, and is generally the first thing I notice when I open my account, is its ability to let you tell your friends 'What's on your mind?' whether they like it or not. This feature would also appear to be the basis for the next big thing after Facebook, Twitter, though it's difficult to imagine a film based on the origins of the fail whale being quite as interesting as Social Network.

Much has been made of the veracity of the movie, and it's funny how the better the film, the less we care about such things. It seems clear in this case that there are indeed many instances where screenwriter Aaron Sorkin strayed from the truth. My general feeling is that anyone hoping to use a Hollywood drama as a credible source of reference is more than a bit naive. Facebook themselves have remained relatively quiet in their reactions to the film and its much publicized inaccuracies, perhaps wisely realizing that any kind of backlash from them would only serve to reinforce the negativity about the company as it exists on celluloid. 




Sunday 7 November 2010

Finding Sweetness

I move addresses more often than most people. As a child I had no say in the matter, and as an adult my inability to legally own property in Indonesia means I can move apartment when it's convenient, and it has been convenient to do so more often than I would have predicted. Despite these frequent changes, my parents, or rather strictly speaking my mother, has owned a little oasis of calm since the late 80s at the foot of this mountain:



Mount Ungaran


This was my permanent address during three separate periods, and living in Jakarta as I do, I'm very fortunate to still be able to return here for holidays at least several times a year. The feelings of agnosticism pervading my family notwithstanding, we have been celebrating December Pagan rituals as a family without fail for a good many years running now. My mother is in fact a staunch Catholic, but she doesn't let the heathens in her midst get under her skin too much.

A long-running joke is that many people outside of Indonesia think it's a place located near or within the island of Bali. Any amount of veracity in this claim is a shame, as while Bali is without a doubt one of my favourite places to be, the whole country is one of many and varied pleasures. Of course at the moment, the main news coming out of Indonesia is once again its propensity for natural disaster, with scenes of evacuees from the vicinity of Mount Merapi dominating televised newscasts. Mount Ungaran is a few hours north of that area where misfortune continues to erupt, and it's also a volcano, although dormant as long as records have been kept on the subject. 

When I was a teenager I suppose I took the lush greenery and views of mountains much for granted, which I would say is quite reasonable, although perhaps I was even slightly more nonchalant than most during their teenage years. Nowadays, when urbanization appears to be encroaching upon all of our lives, often with much malignancy, especially in the developing world, a comfortable home in the country represents a sought after item. Not that Ungaran is entirely countryside these days. The great expanses of rice paddies seem to shrink each year as more and more housing estates are added to the landscape. 

 
Lush greenery

Yet despite the ever ubiquitous presence of semi-detached houses, I think (hope) that it will be a long time before my little corner of Java is close to being spoiled. For starters my parents have staked claim to an ample section of it, and why it may not count as a carbon sink, it might as a carbon plug-hole. As, in contrast to most of their neighbours (there weren't really any when the property was first bought), my parents haven't filled up the land with concrete structures, but instead have kept it very green. This provides our ten or so half-wild dogs with a nice play area, and they in turn keep away would-be thieves with blood-curdling howls at the slightest rustling of leaves during day or night. It should be added that the indiscriminate barking of such a pack of dogs to guard a large garden is something which could at times be aptly described as a necessary evil, that is to say they have no qualms about waking up family members in the middle of the night for no good reason. Either that, or there is a staggering number of would-be thieves in rural Java.

Dogs are man's best friend, but the Javanese, including my mother, have much more affection for cats .When I was a child she told me that she preferred cats to human beings, and I wondered where I fit in with regard to that statement. Visitors to the house have marveled at the harmony that occurs between the cat population, - almost always more than ten - and the abovementioned pack of raucous canines. It is true that you will catch these cats and dogs being extraordinarily tender with one another, although there have been a significant number of fatal exceptions. My six year-old son Alex has taken to asking if we could have a pet for our tiny apartment in Jakarta, and I have to explain to him that even if it were allowed by the building's management, it wouldn't be very kind to the animal itself. Luckily for him, and it must be said mostly unluckily for the animals, he has a home away from home where a veritable menagerie awaits.

One of my favourite things about the garden is that it's normally capable of providing enough coffee for the whole family year-round. The luxury of truly fresh and organic coffee is something which I would be lost without, as caffeinated drinks are my one unshakable vice. I tend to do overdo it when I'm actually in Ungaran on holiday, as there is almost always a fresh pot of the stuff lying around somewhere, but I must simultaneously overdose on oxygen, as I never have trouble (over)sleeping, till those well-meaning four-legged friends decide to raise the alarm.

Much like Jakarta, the weather in Ungaran is not what it used to be. The town used to regularly be very cold for the tropics, cold to the point where wearing a jumper was a must. In recent years it seems to have been getting warmer and warmer, with cold spells becoming less and less frequent. Much like Jakarta in 2010, the rainfall has been relentless, it's just that the air remains weirdly warm despite torrential downpour. I for one believe that Al Gore has a point.

It will soon be time to worship a plastic pine tree, and I will have to get my train tickets booked. I hate flying; not so much the flying itself, but just about everything else, and there is a very comfortable and well-priced train that will take me most of the way to Ungaran. At the same time I'm having to contend with yet another apartment move, mostly for the sake of better proximity to my son's primary school. Being at once an optimist and a realist, I am hoping for the best and expecting the worst where the move is concerned, having got none of the preliminary arrangements taken care of yet, thanks to the seat-of-pants method of work employed by all the property agents I've been in touch with. Money is of course another sticking point. 

It's nice to think that no matter how hard my moving will end up being, along with all the other reasons for distress 2010 has presented to me, I'll be able to sit back in a place well removed from the hustle and bustle of city life, where temperatures are rising but still comfortable, listening to the impossible racket of dogs under the impression they've made it to the happy hunting grounds already, and sip on the freshest cup of Java known to man. 

This year, it will be fresh on the heels of not one, but two more tragic natural disasters affecting Indonesia, and its poorest inhabitants, whose recent suffering make my worst problems look like drops in the ocean , and it is with sincerity that I hope the thousands of Mount Merapi and Sumatran tsunami survivors at least have shelter and a steady supply of food long before the 25th of December.



Friday 5 November 2010

Going Native

In this previous post along with this one, I've tried to discuss my ambivalence on the subject of immigration. Lacking clear opinions is a weakness of mine, although I do now feel that I've affirmed my stance on the subject as one where I believe that open borders are the only answer. My position as an inhabitant of two disparate worlds has helped persuade me that I am right, because like many foreign passport holders living in Indonesia, those rubber stamps are essential to my peace of mind, and so are never too far from it. But while I am technically a British citizen, at this point in my life, I have lived in Indonesia longer than anywhere else, having spent a year as a young child in this country, and almost all of my adulthood here.

I've watched many friends who've stayed or are staying here for shorter terms struggle with the perplexities offered by Javanese life, and while, for obvious reasons, I may be regarded as a good source of information,  I find myself often at a loss if asked to provide insight on the daily peculiarities of life here. It is very likely that this is partly what makes life so much more attractive to me in the country of my mother. Never a dull moment. Certainly, when I meet friends, none of us ever appears to be lost for an anecdote; a tale of the unexpected. One general observation which I am surely not the first to have made is that we pay much closer scrutiny to the actions of others when we are an outsider.

Of course, the seemingly inexplicable approaches to the conduct of the mundane can just as easily become a drag as they can be funny. While I have lived here for longer than any of my expatriate friends, I may be the least tolerant when it comes to jam karet, or literally, rubber time. In fact, I'm chronically nervous about punctuality, and am prone to arriving for appointments far too early. This has led to my having had to wait around for hours for appointments at times, and I do mean hours. What I continue to fail to comprehend is if it is considered undesirable to be on time, then what time is one meant to aim for? Ten minutes late? Half an hour? An hour? I suppose these questions bear little relevance when juxtaposed with the concept of elastic schedule-keeping itself, and it must be concluded that at least one party is going to have to wait under such arrangements.

Despite my brain apparently not functioning in a way suitable to academia in the strictest sense, I do seem to have been born with a gift for mimicry, which led me to absorb a practical understanding of Indonesian early on. Naturally, this has often been to my advantage as, when coupled with my ambiguous ethnic appearance, it has allowed me to navigate the country and its culture unimpeded. Something that makes me very happy is my large network of 'ordinary' Indonesian friends, as opposed to the creepy characters who seem to make a career of ingratiating themselves into the lives of some expats.

However, since I am meant to be a native speaker of English by profession, speaking Indonesian in a way that sounds as though I am a native speaker and looking sort-of Indonesian can work against me, as those who are partially gaining the benefit of my linguistic services can feel ripped off if they suspect I'm simply an Indonesian who speaks English well. I've learned not to try and show-off too much at work of late, but still have raised eyebrows when I've performed simple tasks like ordering food in Indonesian. There's not much I can do about that other than order food from a developing country minimum-wage worker in an exotic language, or try downgrading the standard of my Indonesian. Two options which I find patently ridiculous. When I entered the language business, I naively thought that having decent spoken Indonesian would help me in the eyes of my employers. I've learned not to assume the obvious since then.

It's difficult to put a finger on exactly why I prefer Indonesia to my father's country. It's mostly a feeling perhaps, usually a feeling of great depression when I'm back in the UK, although I haven't been back in over ten years, so the time is ripe for re-testing the waters. One of the prime movers of depression is boredom, and it's probable that this is a contributing factor. You can do more with less in Indonesia - although I'm under no illusions about the fact that my standard of life is far superior to the majority of Indonesians. I'm also partial to warm weather and sunshine, and when versus the UK, Indonesia definitely wins in these respects. 

That's not to say there aren't many things about Indonesia which I don't wish were more akin to a developed European country. Constantly having religion and the supernatural (listed here separately, but they don't necessarily need to be) in your face is something I find to be trying indeed. New York Times columnist Charles Blow's findings on religion's relation to wealth were a cause of consternation to me, given Indonesia's high ranking on his chart. 

Indonesia is vastly over-inhabited, and while I prefer the liveliness of Java to the long silences which are to be found in my father's native Scotland, the evident social problems caused not only by over-population, but also by a very uneven distribution of population make me yearn for a happier medium. Nowhere are these issues more apparent than in Jakarta, with its unmanaged urban sprawl and hordes of densely packed citizens. 
At the end of the day, I can't call myself Indonesian as I'm neither a full-blooded Indonesian, nor a citizen. Only the latter has scope for change, though it would seem a low priority despite this still being the age of reformasi. While I can do an extremely good impersonation of an Indonesian, I am still not wholly familiar with its language or any one of its many cultures. These aspects of my existence may well be what have led me to a serious distaste for nationalism and man-made societal divisions. For having only lived eleven years in the country whose name is emblazoned across my passport (a document envied by most Indonesians), how can I call myself British? The internet, ultra-cheap airfares and the globalized workplace have been making borders increasingly meaningless, and I can only hope that they continue to do so. 

What is a culture anyway? To my mind, it cannot exist as a list of characteristics defined by experts, otherwise, what would be its point? Rather it should be a living, evolving, undefinable entity which serves to enrich our lives and not restrict them.

In the meantime, I will continue to muddle my way through life here, and hope that I don't get booted out of a country that at least never fails to be interesting.